The funder who changed the closing date has rejected our grant application as it was submitted late.

No great loss as it’s confirmed now (and we kind of knew it already) that our project proposal would have very little chance of success anyway.

So far so good

Six weeks into my new full-time role at work with the additional two days a week focussed on fundraising for a new youth work.

I’ve scoped about 15 potential grant funders, small and large, and submitted 4 applications or pre-applications.

It seems to be grant application season as many of the closing dates are in February and March.

Unfortunately, one funder switched their closing date to Thursday last week after previously advertising it as Friday (The Wayback Machine agrees with me). Another closed their online form the day before or on the morning of their published closing date (Friday). Luckily, perhaps, they didn’t remove the live application form page I had bookmarked so I could still submit.

It will be annoying if our applications are disregarded in these two cases, although the lesson is don’t wait until deadline day.

I’m not beating myself up about it. We only had a few days to put something together, and I was chasing/waiting on my boss to draft and agree final wording. It’s a learning curve for all of us, and lots we can do better.

AI tools were genuinely helpful, and also provided useful feedback on our applications - need to remember to do that step before submitting them next time.

Still setting up this bloody laptop.

Setting up a new laptop for a colleague at work. A very sleek and lightweight Lenovo V15 G4.

A better all round social work experience for everyone involved. They should be able to move to a four day week.

Ealing Council slashes admin work by 44% with new AI tool ealing.nub.news

I just used Voicenotes.com on my phone to record various training prices from historical invoices reading them off my laptop screen, asked it to create a summary, copied into NotebookLM to sort and make a pretty table I could paste into Sheets, then tidied up the presentation.

Then asked Gemini to research three equivalent types of training from external providers, copied responses into Docs, imported Docs into NotebookLM and got a second shiny table for comparison.

Productivity through the roof.

Once it can make coffee and bring cake to the table, and make off-the-cuff wisecracks, I will be expendable.

Back home early from work after second meeting had been cancelled without anyone telling anyone else. So we were all sat there like lemons for twenty minutes until someone asked if we were going to get started. 🤦‍♂️

Oh, and printed a couple of things I’ll need later on our new home printer - only to discover the kids have used up all the colour already printing off photos of planets.

I could use the printer at work, but it’s almost certain not to work when I actually need it to work.

Spent the morning going over the AI’s homework that I assigned it last week, correcting it and filling in the gaps. Still quicker than doing it myself? Not sure, although I found its formatting helpful to follow, and that surely saved me some time.

Virtual meeting completed eventually after the organiser (initially) and my boss (all together) failed to appear.

Quick lunch and out for two back-to-back in-person meetings (likely with all the same people).

Back to work

The last time I worked full-time, in 2015, I got fired for taking too much time off sick.

The last time I worked full time before that, in 2011, I got fried for taking too much time off sick.

So I was quite happy to work part-time since 2016, fifteen hours a week to begin with, increasing to twenty two and a half hours in 2017. It felt like something I could cope with.

And it allowed me to spend a lot of time with big kid when he was little, and then little kid, too. Although that was often tiring ‘work’ I feel very fortunate to have had that much time with them when they were so young and fun.

Working two or three days a week and really being in charge of my own hours and schedule also allowed me lots of flexibility. I could almost work when I liked and didn’t worry about how many hours I’d done. If I needed to I could easily make up time or catch up on another day.

Going back full-time today, I was very conscious of how much time I spent working, and not working. I’ve got much less flexibility now to make up my hours.

Then again, I know that at work, it’s possible to spend a lot of time in the kitchen, the bathroom, the hallway, and the office not actually doing much work. I won’t be too hard on myself for making a cup of tea, powdering my nose, connecting the wife to the internet or checking my online socials every now and then.

All in all it wasn’t a bad day. Nothing urgent to do and I ended up going down a fundraising rabbit-hole. Found a couple of new-to-me funders and shared them with the relevant people, one of whom has already said they will apply.

Job done.